Why does my kid refuse to learn Farsi?
It’s never too late.
We can inadvertently discourage kids and adults alike from trying to learn Farsi (or anything else), even when we have the best intentions. Maybe they are naturally shy or anxious, or maybe they haven’t yet developed a learning mindset. We can’t control any criticism, teasing, or messages about mistakes they may get from media, friends, and other outside influences, but we can prepare them at home to become confident, resilient learners who don’t take those negative messages to heart.
Okay, but what if I’ve been doing it all wrong? What if it’s too late? Don’t worry: it’s never too late! We can start right now and repair any negative associations with learning in general or learning Farsi in particular. Below are some things to avoid and some phrases to practice that will help build a learning mindset in ourselves and our children.
Don’t Do These Things
- Don’t worry about small mistakes.
- This is not school. The important thing is to instill a love of learning, and positive associations with Farsi in particular.
- Don’t tease or laugh.
- It can be nearly impossible to avoid when someone mispronounces a word or twists a phrase into something hilariously weird. But try to resist. Especially for sensitive or anxious people, this can be discouraging because they feel like you’re laughing at them instead of what they said.
- Don’t get defensive about your intentions.
- If someone says we hurt their feelings when we laughed, criticized, or teased, we don’t get to tell them “No, I didn’t!” Regardless of what we meant to do, the fact is they felt hurt as a result. We can’t change the fact that they felt that way just because we didn’t mean for them to feel that way.
- If we can’t get over our own defensiveness, we can’t help anyone else to deal with their hurt or rectify our role in it, intentional or not.
- If we never change our hurtful behavior, a learner might become overly perfectionistic and anxious. Or, and I don’t know which is worse, they may turn away from the cause of hurt: us, and the language we’re trying to teach them.
Do These Things Instead
“It is good to make mistakes! How else will you learn?”
Express empathy.
- “Yeah, this is a hard one.”
- “Learning the alphabet is challenging, isn’t it. But we can do hard things, and we’ll learn together.”
- “I’ve done the same exact thing before! When I learned د, I always confused it with the letter ذ!’
- “I can see why you chose خ instead of ح. Those two letters look almost exactly alike! The only difference is this one little dot.”
Encourage effort, not perfection:
- “I’m so proud of you for trying so hard!”
- “You’re right. ذ does make a z sound! In this word, we usually see it spelled withز which sounds the same. Great job sounding it out.”
- “It is good to make mistakes! How else will you learn?”
- “You’re doing great. You are a great learner. I love how you try to find the answer even though it’s hard.”
Use questions or pretend not to know yourself:
- “Hmm doesn’t álef have a straight line? This block has a curvy line. What do you think? Oh, you’re right, I think this must be lãm. They look very similar.”
Walk them through the thought process:
- “Gosh, چ (cheh) is hard because it has a big round bottom, just like jeem, heh, and kheh. But for cheh, there are three dots in the middle. Do you see any blocks that have a round shape with three dots in the middle?”
What do you do to develop a learning mindset in your family?
I hope these suggestions help encourage you to continue learning Farsi together as a family! See my next post for activities you can do together to have fun (first priority) and learn Farsi (added benefit). Do you have any advice about bilingual parenting you’d like to share with my readers? Favorite parenting books or podcasts? Send me an email (maia@littlefarsibooks.com) or contact me with this form!